


Woke From Dreaming

by Sakura_no_Miko



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Dissociation, Identity Issues, Kink Meme, M/M, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 22:58:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13600239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sakura_no_Miko/pseuds/Sakura_no_Miko
Summary: The Winter Soldier remembered little, one mission blurring into the next, like strange hallucinations that broke up his endless dreams.He doesn't want that for Steve.Steve doesn't deserve to wake up, confused, afraid, without knowing who he can trust or where he is or what he is. Not knowing what his own face looks like, or what the words tumbling out of his dry throat mean.





	Woke From Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally start to fill a prompt on the [Captain America kink meme](http://capkink.livejournal.com/810.html?thread=746026#t746026) where Bucky is found before Steve is. Seven years later (!) I'm getting it off my hard drive. 
> 
> Most of the warnings are canon-typical, but just in case: references to violence, imprisonment, torture, warfare, and poor Bucky having dissociation/imposter syndrome issues and anxiety attacks.

It was Tony who called him. _Tony_ , the man thinks furiously, knew before he did. Tony was probably already there. In his private jet, that rich boy son-of-a-bitch. And he had the gall to call him up and gloat about it. Damned useless SHIELD security. 

 

He bites back a snarl, navigating the doors and hallways to his ultimate goal: the office of one General Nicholas Joseph Fury, American hero, leader of SHIELD, head coordinator of the Avengers project, and a _goddamned liar_. 

 

No doubt someone or other has noticed his less-than-pleased expression, given that there's suddenly an abnormally large number of uniformed SHIELD agents between him and Fury's door. His left arm whirs faintly, mechanical bits smaller than he can see or understand reacting to the adrenaline pulsing through what remained of his flesh. 

 

Some distant part of him knows he shouldn't be fighting. These guys, they're all just soldiers. Just following orders. He's had to struggle, these past few years, not to give in to the impulse to fight, to destroy, to get from point A to point B in the simplest terms — and damn anyone who stood in his way. Had to struggle not to fall back on lessons burned into his mind since before he could remember. Before that — if he could just get back to before that —

 

There are too many agents now. Too many hands, too close to barely-concealed weapons. They'd invited him here, rehabilitated him, tried to convince him he could be just another hero, but when it came down to it, he was still the same lousy, beat-up piece of trash HYDRA had dragged back from the Russian mountains.

 

His arm twitches again, mechanical fingers curling against a mechanical palm. It would be too easy to let out a tiny pulse, knock them out, no one would be hurt. 

 

But he couldn't, he tells himself. He couldn't. _Steve_ wouldn't —

 

He steps in front of Fury's door, and the entire area seems tense. “Fury,” he barks out. What little decorum is left in him stops him from adding a few more choice words. Fury was still the commander of this operation. Some things even he couldn't overcome. 

 

“Captain Barnes.”

 

Two words, and the tension in the hallway begins to lessen, like air deflating out of a balloon. It is Fury himself who opens the door and looks down at him. 

 

“Captain, if you would kindly step inside before discussing certain classified matters,” Fury says coolly. “And the rest of you, back to your positions.”

 

The agents disperse as quickly as they appeared. Professional, some would say. Robotic, he thinks. 

 

Fury goes back to his desk, but he lingers a moment to shut the door behind them. The flare of anger is starting to turn into ice. Now what, he thinks. If it's true. If it's not true. 

 

Ever since he woke up, his life has been divided into the _then_ and the _now_ by two things, planted in the back of his mind like an impenetrable wall. Two old aches, blurred together into a single mantra of gone-gone-gone:

 

His arm. Gone-gone-gone, melted into hazy memories of waking up, of pain, of not knowing why he couldn't grab at the restraints pinning him down, a swell of panic as he realized he could still feel his fingers, even as he gazed at the stump just below his shoulder. That was one. 

 

The other...

 

“Is it true?” He barely hears his own voice.

 

Fury pauses for a moment, hands clasped too calmly on top of his desk. Files. So many of their files are marked secret and classified and splattered red like they've just come through a firefight that it's completely pointless. Top-secret is normal. Classified is water cooler chatter. And the real secrets — well, those who know, know, and that's that. 

 

“Officially, on July 22nd, at approximately 0800 hours local time, a civilian scientific team operating in the Arctic circle uncovered the remains of an aircraft matching the description of a HYDRA ship presumed lost in 1943.” Fury's one good eye looks him straight in the face. “The sole occupant was identified on-site as Captain Steve Rogers.”

 

His lungs empty out, harsh and quick. They'd found him. Found Stevie. Funny, wasn't it, that they'd taken so much longer to find a hero's corpse than the remains of a nameless, forgotten soldier in the snow-filled wilderness. All that effort to find the one man who really mattered, and one bad bit of luck to find him instead. 

 

“Captain.” 

 

He doesn't even look up. That's it, then. The only other thing. Arm-gone blurs into Steve-gone and everything-gone, gone-fucking- _gone_.

 

“Captain,” Fury barks again. He wants to snarl back, but Fury's fist smashes down against the table with a resounding thud, so loud that he finally glances up, if only to see how many bones Fury has broken. “If you would listen — ”

 

“I am, Director,” he mutters, and it isn't a lie, not entirely. 

 

“ — then you would hear that, unofficially, Captain Rogers was resuscitated and transferred to SHIELD emergency health services less than an hour later.”

 

That, he thinks faintly, is the feeling of a heart attack. Catastrophic heart failure. Beat-beat-beat- _stop_.

 

“He's alive?” That wasn't a shriek, he tells himself, the way his voice comes out creaky and high-pitched. 

 

“As alive as you are, Captain.” Fury's mouth flicked upwards. 

 

“How — where — ” Once upon a time, he'd had calmness drilled into him. Calm. Cool. Under fire, under interrogation, never let anything out. Even if your own body betrayed you, you stayed cold and unyielding as ice. 

 

It's only taken one word to make him crack.

 

“Now,” Fury begins again, looking him up and down. “I've been hearing some complaints about you, Captain. Irritability. A tendency to charge off, alone. A certain lack of regard for your teammates' safety — and your own.” 

 

“You picked a swell time for a lecture, Director,” he manages. Steve is alive. Alive. Steve is in a SHIELD medical facility. Which one? New York is closest. Or Los Angeles? Bigger. Closer to Tony's base than he wants to imagine. But they might go for something more secure, more remote. New Mexico — no, _classified_ , tied up with Barton. The Great Lakes.

 

“As such, Captain, I am putting you on leave for the foreseeable future. Think of it as an enforced vacation.”

 

He's up, out of the chair before he can think. “Where is he?”

 

~~~

 

Christ, Fury is an idiot.

 

SHIELD faked up some mish-mash of antiques and throwback retro junk to look like a hospital room from their time, but, hell, whatever those advisers and historians had said, it ain't right, and he'd have known that in an instant. 

 

The smell is all wrong, for one. You couldn't fake that kind of pollution, that sickness and rot and dirt. The world doesn't smell the same, doesn't sound the same, doesn't taste the same, and Steve would have pegged it from the moment he opened his eyes.

 

But Steve isn't awake yet.

 

Alive, yeah. But not awake. 

 

He paces. There's a door, four walls, a comfy little hospital-shaped prison keeping Steve in and him out. 

 

He could go in. He will go in. He'll go in and —

 

And what? Steve's not awake. The doctors aren't exactly the most talkative types — too much classified and confidentiality and we just don't know — but he knows enough. They want Steve to wake up on his own, and it will be days yet before they start trying to pump him full of stimulants. They don't think he's in a coma, not permanently damaged, just — asleep. He's been asleep for so long. 

 

Damned doctors, so sure they know exactly what to do. He's been forced into civvies, all his weapons confiscated, his communicator banned. They even suggested he remove his arm. Too shocking, they say, and he wants to scream at them, you're all a bunch of goddamn idiots. They went through a war. Nothing's shocking enough to stop them from soldiering on. 

 

He did.

 

His introduction to the world had come in fits and bursts, a few days here, a week there, each mission slightly stranger, slightly different from the previous one. Back then, he hadn't understood time, how it passed by him as he slept. Just like Steve.

 

He adjusted. He doesn't remember a lot of the details — screamingpainblood — but he remembers how the walkie-talkies got smaller and finer, until they weren't that different from the tiny phones, and seeing a thousand colors on a hundred inch screen doesn't impress him as much as the first off-gray moments of television did. Guns might shoot smaller bullets, bigger ones, quieter ones, poison and shrapnel and shocks of electricity, but they line up under his eyes and against his trigger finger the same. 

 

The Winter Soldier remembered little, one mission blurring into the next, like strange hallucinations that broke up his endless dreams. But there was one constant — the woman with red hair who stood beside him, the ghost of a smile on her face, the scent of gunpowder on her fingers. She pulled him forward, like a siren's spell, and when she disappeared — when everything was consumed in fire and explosions — he finally woke up. 

 

He doesn't want that for Steve. 

 

Steve doesn't deserve to wake up, confused, afraid, without knowing who he can trust or where he is or what he is. Not knowing what his own face looks like, or what the words tumbling out of his dry throat mean.

 

Fuck. If they want it gone, they'll get it gone. It doesn't matter, he thinks, and pulls his arm off, the familiar pop of one metal bit detaching from another. He's customizable now, a lump of flesh attached to Tony's latest tech project. A high-tech ball-joint doll. There. Not hard at all. To see Steve, he'd tear off his real one too. 

 

It was made for functioning anyway, not looks, just a vaguely arm-shaped piece of metal that whirred slightly alongside his own breaths, the only sound in the room. There's a small table sitting there, next to the door. His uniform jacket, his communicator, his arm. Every part of him, laying there, neatly spread out like a memorial. Everything he is. 

 

What was left of what he _was_? What Steve would even recognize?

 

His hair is too long. Not for now, but for then. He's scruffy, unshaven — a few days into a water-and-soap ration, maybe, or a delay of new razors arriving. His eyes are black with sleepless nights and near-illegal stimulants, no surprise there, but Steve had always managed to look like he was still in the films, no matter how many days of rain and mud they trudged through. Not him. He looks chewed up. He doesn't have the wrinkles or the scars to show the years, but he doesn’t need them. 

 

Steve is gonna know. He wouldn't know what or how or why, but he'd know. He'd know something was wrong.

 

The thought of Steve — Stevie — looking at him like —

 

It's the whirring that snaps him back. He doesn't know how long the panic bubbles up inside him, how long the blood rushes from his heart to his head. If he'd kept the arm on, it would have whirred right on along with his heart, but, cut off, it only follows whatever steady rhythm Tony put in to make it run on its own. 

 

Traitor.

 

His flesh-and-blood hand grips at the door handle. There's an electronic lock, already turned off, but you wouldn't see it from the outside, no, just a normal old door handle. But that's the trick, isn't it, making all of this look plain and simple and old, like nothing has changed, like everything is as normal as apple pie and —

 

Maybe the whirring isn't in his heart or his arm, just his brain. Whir, whir, thoughts spinning right out of control, because, suddenly, he's old, and he's lived for long and seen so much change and the weight of showing that to Steve is finally catching up to him. 

 

And yet, some treacherous part of his brain whispers, if he admits the truth to himself, the thought of Stevie looking up at him, full of questions, lost, needing his help again — it gives him a shiver of pleasure, right in his gut and up his spine, familiar, a tiny piece of _then_ instead of _now_ , a little bit of that swagger and strength he always felt, protecting Stevie. 

 

He steps back. Coward. Coward, he thinks, even as he sags back against the table. Whir, whir. Beat, beat. Breathe, breathe. 

 

It's sick, really. It's lies. Because, even before he'd seen Steve like this, like some museum statue, some crazy body that was so obviously what he deserved and what he should have had all along, he'd known he was lying to himself. Take care of little Stevie, his mother had said, back when they were both runts, and he'd taken it like Gospel, because no matter how big the schoolyard bullies were or how the girls looked down at him and his greased-stained slacks, he was still better off than tiny, sick Stevie. Of course he was. He had to be.

 

He'd known it wasn't fair, even back then, because he glared and puffed himself up and pretended not to be scared for Stevie's sake, but Stevie wasn't scared. Stevie was the real brave one, and every time he jumped forward, scrapping for the fight Bucky was trying so desperately to avoid, he knew. He'd always known. He wasn't protecting Steve. Steve was stronger than anyone else he knows. 

 

It's just now — everyone knows. 

 

And he really is the sick one, the weak one, because sometimes he wishes no one did. 

 

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if Tony had done it. Been the first person there with Steve. Tony — he has to call him Tony, really, because otherwise Tony and his father began to blur into a single, faceless _Stark_ — knows all this tech stuff, knows the modern world. Hell, he practically i _s_ the modern world. 

 

Howard had been the sort of man who could watch you save the entire world and still make you feel like it wasn't enough to impress him. Tony, though, Tony is different. He has that same unworldly brilliance, a way of darting from point-to-point without stopping for everyone else to catch up, but, when it came down to it, every time you started to think he was looking down at you, he'd add, “but that's just me. I'd have probably ended up killing everyone or creating an insane amount of property damage. Good job, soldier boy.” 

 

Or maybe that agent Fury likes so much, the one so straight-laced, so by-the-books you feel like you're somehow doing things wrong just by standing near him. Steve would understand that. And hell, the guy could make Tony listen to him.

 

Or even Nat. She'd dragged his sorry ass back. Hell of a dame, Nat. One day, he went to sleep — tranq'd, likely, but it was still pretty fuzzy — and the next time he'd woken up, it hadn't been to his handlers, to a mission. Just destruction. The good Lord himself couldn't know how many installations she destroyed with her SHIELD buddies, but one of 'em had been his, and with that he'd become a free man. It hadn't taken him long to recognize her signature on the wreckage, or her calling card to any survivors.

 

Even now, they aren't sure how many people had been taken, used, torn apart and put back together as — whatever the hell he was. A soldier. A tool. Some mish-mash of illegal tech and experimental drugs and a single order, implanted so deep inside him he couldn't — 

 

Fight. 

 

All he could do was fight. Aim him at the target, watch the blood bloom. 

 

It hadn't been like the war. Everyone had their girl back home, their mama who cried when they enlisted, a cousin who was killed, someone who knew someone who'd _seen_ the death camps. Everyone had some reason, some lie, some stupid delusion of heroism that had led them to those dirty barracks and cramped cots. 

 

Back then, things were easy. You could pretend your letters got lost somewhere in the muddy fields or the vastness of the ocean, and never even have to write them.

 

What could he have told Steve back then? That he knew how quickly a man crumbled when his neck was snapped in two, how it sounded when someone took a knife to the gut and gasped like they were drowning in nothing but air? How cold and wet and sickening it all was, day in, day out, like they were cursed or plagued or _changing_ , slowly, into something human-shaped but rotting inside? 

 

No, he hoped Stevie was safe. Told himself Stevie was safe, and away, and as long as he kept fighting, he could make the war end before some crazy doctor finally took Steve's pleading seriously. He'd thought it every day he was captured, with every needle that bastard scientist had stuck in him. Stevie was safe. Stevie wasn't ever gonna feel this pain, this fucking fire racing through him, the sickness of his stomach emptying itself out and thick welts painting his legs and arms from the restraints holding him down as he screamed.

 

Got so bad he dreamed Stevie had gotten one of Jack's giant beans and come and rescued him off, and when he came to, and realized he wasn't dreaming, well, wasn't that a kick in the head.

 

Tiny little Stevie. He'd never see him again. Why did that put such a sour feeling in his stomach? 

 

Face it, Bucky, you're pathetic, he thinks. Fuck. 

 

His fingers grasp at the table. There have to be cameras all over this joint, and the thought of some SHIELD suck-ups watching him stand there like an idiot is enough to put him back at the door. He pushes, hard — hard as he can with his human arm — and it swings inwards, and —

 

A machine beeps. The walls are that sickly bright white of hospitals, that color that's always blinding when he's groggy and drugged. Why the hell is it always white? The floors, too — hard, not-quite-slippery tile that clacks under his boots. No windows, not that you could get light or fresh air in an underground facility. A flat, hard chair, clearly not meant for extended use. Utilitarian.

 

The bed is pressed against the wall, hovering only a few feet from the ground. He recognizes the standard military sheets, the crispness of the folds around the corners. Completely unrumpled. The pillows you could only ever pass out on. A blanket that probably scratched right through the thin sheets. Pretty cheap digs for a hero. 

 

Not that it matters when he's unconscious. 

 

Which he is. Still.

 

Might always be.

 

It's like a cold shock — the thought that Steve might not wake up. The serum had done amazing things, sure, but — they didn't really know, did they? What part of that mad scientist mojo had kept him alive, or Nat alive. What part of it had killed and twisted and mutated the rest of them. The only constancy seemed to be its inconsistency. Hell, every hero — every villain — all of them, different. Freaks of nature that could never be repeated. Bam a guy with gamma radiation, he could turn any color of the rainbow. Any feral, ferocious, furious color of the rainbow. His next door neighbor has a mutant kid. Hell, he half-believes SHIELD really does have an unofficial APB on anyone caught buying more than a year's worth of spandex — and tabs on every wannabe fashion student in the greater New York area.

 

Some days he wonders if the world is crazy, or he's crazy, because none of it makes sense. All the rules he'd ever learned were wrong. Forget fish out of water, he's a fish rocketing off into space.

 

And this is the world Steve is gonna wake up in. Has to wake up in. 

 

Steve is — still. Very still. Breathing — that's a good sign. Always a good sign. Up and down, steady, little flair of his nostrils, the outline of his chest under the blanket. 

 

The impulse to _touch_ Steve is sharp and hard to resist. Neck, wrist, any of that bare skin that would let him feel Steve's heart was still beating, that his body was alive and well even if he was still asleep. 

 

He's warm.

 

His hands brush Steve's fingers, innocently, before darting to the inside of his wrist. Forget the machines, beeping steadily, their jagged green lines a testament saying, “yes, you idiot, he's alive.” He has to feel it, touch it, know it for himself. 

 

He's warm, and it's weird, because Steve had been frozen. He almost expected Steve would still feel like ice. But, no. Warm. Alive. 

 

How many times had he done this, before? Back when Steve would cough and cough and then go still as death, too wrung out to even clear his lungs? In a way, this was nothing new for them. Nothing new, waiting, watching, wondering if the next breath would be Steve's last. Nothing new, feeling helpless. 

 

It was just — he'd forgotten, somewhere along the way, who he was, and who Steve was. Some random days he'd catch a glimpse of a painting, or a documentary — Great Heroes of World War 2, looping and looping on cable tv — and he didn't even recognize himself. He knew it was him, standing there, same hair, same eyes, same face, and there was Morita, and Dugan, and all the Commandos, and Steve, front and center, America's poster boy hero. Invincible super soldier, they called him, and all the films made him look that way, and the posters, and the actors, and the terrible purple prose. 

 

When his memories first started to come back, he didn't even realize they were the same person, the boy he dreamed of protecting, and the man who pulled him off the torture table. They were all just strange, half-formed figures, flashes of bright blue eyes or a badly stitched coat, pieces of memories. 

 

It's strange, trying to reconcile them. It's strange, knowing they are the same man, and yet it makes sense, of course it made sense. Steve is Steve. 

 

But the Steve in his mind is muddled, layered up with years of half-remembered images and sensational propaganda. The Steve in his mind is half hero, half legend. The Steve he remembers probably isn't even all his own memories. 

 

He doesn't know, sometimes, if he's remembering something because he was there, or because someone told him he was there, or because he was dreaming he was there. 

 

Maybe he did touch Steve's wrist like this, often enough to be casual, full of worry, intimate. He doesn't know. Right now, Steve's pulse is strong and steady against his fingers. 

 

Even if Steve wakes up, he thinks suddenly, this — all of this — might be wrong. Steve might not even know him. For all he knows, Bucky Barnes is long dead, and all of this, all of these half-formed memories, are just another lie. 

 

Calm down, soldier, he tells himself, but the words are hollow. Fuck of a time for an existential crisis. 

 

He sits. The chair is hard, and his back will be aching, that obnoxious ache that never quite goes away no matter how many painkillers you pop. His fingers linger a moment at Steve's wrist, holding against his pulse like a trusted knife. He stretches his fingers out. Christ. Steve's hands got so big. Even his fingers are longer, thicker. Makes his look almost delicate by comparison. He snorts. Steve used to have fingers like pencil leads. Steve used to keep them, pencils, all shapes and sizes, and a sharpening blade to keep them pointy. Charcoal, too, in black wedges that made his hands so dirty he could paint a picture with his fingertips — had dusty gray marks tinged over his shirts where he grabbed them off the ironing board, every time, no matter how many times he swore he'd remember to wash his hands, or how many times Bucky threatened to burn the damn charcoal on a cold night. Every one of Steve's shirts had at least one abstract pattern dirtied into it, under the collar or along the hemline, and even a couple of his had gotten the brand. 

 

One afternoon, he remembered, there'd been a huge gust of wind that knocked the building's clotheslines half off their nails, and there, in the rumpled heap of who-knew-how-many neighbor’s slacks and skirts and shirts on the ground, there was a shirt with the tell-tale gray fingerprints. Right in the middle of the biggest mud puddle you'd ever seen. 

 

Well, that would be a sorry memory to make up, he thinks, and his chest feels a little bit lighter. He puts his hand on top of Steve's, palm-to-palm, so he can move from wrist to fingertips. 

 

He sits. 

 

Arm gone. Mind gone. Life gone. Steve — 

 

— here.

 

~~~

 

He shoots up, body reacting before his mind. No alarm. Nothing. What had woken him up? Even Steve is looking around blearily.

 

Wait.

 

Steve, Steve is — 

 

He can't even think _awake_ before he's grabbed roughly around the shoulders, and the blood rushing through his ears is too loud to even parse out the machines around them ringing and Steve's voice against his neck.

 

His name. Steve is saying his name, and oh god, and you're alive, all run together into a muddled murmur against him, air and heat and life. Alive. Both of them, alive. 

 

“Is this Heaven?” Steve asks, and Bucky chokes back a laugh.

 

“Naw, we're still alive, Stevie,” he manages, and damnit if his voice doesn't sound as rough as Steve's does. He couldn't have been asleep that long. He'd fallen over against the bed in his sleep, and it takes a moment for him to balance himself enough to lean back into the chair. His arm aches from being slept on, so it's no help. Steve is already upright, like he hasn't just spent decades asleep, and he carefully swings his legs over the side of the bed. 

 

Steve is staring at him. Not unusual, with his ugly mug. Then — to his arm. His left arm. His left lack-of-arm. Kind of strange to shrug with only part of a shoulder, he thinks distantly. “I've got one, actually,” he says, “but the docs made me take it off. Thought it might scare you.”

 

Steve keeps staring, his expression blank, before — laughing. Steve is laughing. God, he didn't think he'd hear that again.

 

“It's shinier than a new quarter,” he says, and that's a joke. Coming out of his mouth. What. 

 

But Steve's face falls, and his follows just as quickly. Steve looks unhappy, and there it is again, heartbeat-beat-beat, pounding in his chest. Steve is unhappy. Was the joke that bad?

 

“They found you,” Steve says, and oh, of course. Everything Steve says is always stupidly obvious, right after he says it. Because Steve is so stupidly honest. 

 

And that's why it's always been so hard to answer him, because he's never been honest, and he's never been a good liar, so where does that leave him?

 

“I thought you were dead.” Steve starts talking before he can even think up an excuse. “I didn't go back. I didn't even try — ”

 

“I should have been dead,” is the first thing that comes to mind, and he wants to say he regrets saying it, regrets the way Steve's face goes flat and his mouth stops in a little circle. That old self-loathing. He never really lost it. Even with Steve — stubborn, mulish Steve, with his ideas and his stupid optimism.

 

He expects Steve to take a punch at him, honestly. Even when he knows Steve only throws his punches when you really deserve it, and this? No. 

 

“I mean,” he falters. “I should have — logically,” — he finally grasps the right word — “died. It's just, I don't know, the best we could figure, that HYDRA doctor was tryin' to figure out the stuff they used on you, and he — ” Bucky slows again. “He used it on me.” He shrugs. “Who'd've known, yeah? I guess it didn't take, or something. I didn't change.” 

 

“But you were alive.”

 

There are so many things Bucky wants to say to that, and none of them, none of them are going to pass from his lips, not now, hopefully not ever. “I woke up,” he says, and that's all he can say without calling down the wrath of SHIELD's psych department down on his head again. 

 

Steve is quiet for a moment, and that probably means he's going to press, and press hard, later, but for now, he's quiet. “The war? What happened?”

 

What happened. Steve is so earnest. The War, he says, because that what it had been, to them. There'd been The War, when they were kids, when their fathers disappeared amid hushed whispers and mothers crying at night. Never again, everyone said, until they grew up and it had been The War all over again. 

 

It ended, he wants to say, and then there was another one, and another one, but that — that would hurt Steve, wouldn't it. That coldness. 

 

“It ended,” he tries. “You were sleeping for a long time.” 

 

And Steve just looks — 

 

He can't put a name to it. Lost. The kind of look you see when you have to deliver the I'm sorry, he's not coming home speech. The I'm sorry, but we can protect you speech. He was always lousy at those. No one ever believed him. 

 

He hates that look on Steve's face, because Steve is the strong one, has to be, if Steve can't do it, then. Then what else is there?

 

And yet — that ain't fair, either, is it. Sometimes he hates the men who did this to Steve, made him into this. It was stupid. He'd've told them that straight off. Giving a guy like Steve so much power. Like picking up the first moon-eyed kid watching cars race and giving him the keys to a souped-up dragster. 

Give him all that strength, all that ability to do everything he'd ever wanted, and make him learn on his own just how easy it was to crash and burn. 

 

It was easy to save one guy, yeah. Easy to pull off one crazy mission and feel like a hero. Easy to push yourself a little more each time, until you were stupid enough to crash a plane into the Arctic. Because you could. Because it might help someone, somewhere. It was only blind, stupid luck he — they — both ended up sleeping. 

 

Waking up is supposed to be a good thing. Start of a new day. New chances. Waking up has always been a shock. A reminder. Hey, still alive. Somehow. 

 

“Hey,” he says, and this is the stupidest thing, but it's what he's thought of. “You remember when you and your Ma were living near the hospital, and there was that old man on the first floor?” Can't remember his name, Bucky thinks, but he remembers the way the old man spoke, slurring English and something-not-English he still can't place, even after traveling the world with SHIELD. “He used to visit his daughter up north every year, and he'd come dragging that big old box of his back each time. We tried to help him once, remember?” Because they'd been young and stupid and thought they were strong, he thinks, and however stupid he was, Steve was twice as stupid and twice as stubborn. “I popped my arm out so bad I had to pretend I was sick the next day when my Da needed someone to help him load the truck. You remember what was in that box?”

 

“Those stupid fish,” Steve says, and Bucky's heart shouldn't be going that fast, that hard, just because — because Steve remembers. 

 

Birds, birds are smart, Bucky remembers, and he can still hear the old man's accent. He couldn't voice it, but he remembers it, as easy as the notes of a song or the lines from a movie. Birds go away when it gets cold. But fish are stupid. They stay in the water until it freezes over and all you do is cut them out.

 

Which, it turned out, was what the old man did every winter. Went up to the frozen lake by his daughter's cabin, cut out a block of ice, fish and all, and by the time he got back to that run-down room of his on the first floor, the ice was melting and the fish were just starting to stir, enough that the two loud-mouthed boys from upstairs got a face full of fish water when they managed to open the case up.

 

“Well, you and me, we're the fish.” 

 

Steve, bless his heart, manages to go about half a minute before he laughs again. The laugh changes to a cough, and Bucky instinctively reaches towards the cheap pitcher he'd seen on one of the side tables, only to freeze. Right. No arm. It takes less than a second to grab a much-too-small paper cup with his right, but he knows Steve's noticed. It's been a while since he thought about it, really. He pours some water into the cup and hands it over. Not really cold. Either the pitcher has been there a while or SHIELD can't afford a thermos. 

 

“You could get it,” Steve says. “If it helps.”

 

It's a tempting thought, if only because it might make Steve stop glancing over at his shoulder every few words. It's not pity, no. It actually reminds him of how Steve used to ask him to model, and he'd just stare and stare at Bucky's hand or his foot, back and forth between the limb and the page he was drawing on. Like he's updating the mental picture of Bucky in his mind, erasing the old pictures of his arm and replacing it with —

 

The thought makes him feel slightly sick.

 

Steve makes a motion from the corner of his eye. When did he look away? Steve's hand is suddenly touching his. “Breathe,” Steve says, and, yeah, yeah he is kind of breathing funny. Didn't notice it. No whirring this time, but his heart is starting that thump-thump-thump again.

 

He actually misses the whirring. Everything seems so quiet and still without it. 

 

“Docs told me to take it off,” he says. “Something about not shocking you with all this magic future stuff.” 

 

“They had no right.” The anger in Steve's voice is surprising. “It's your arm, Buck, they can't just — ”

 

“It's just a piece of metal.” Oh boy, Tony would have a conniption fit if he heard that one. His cutting-edge, fully weaponized and functional prosthesis, just a piece of metal. 

 

“It's yours,” Steve says again. “It's part of you.”

 

“It's fine, Steve. I've heard dumber orders.” Which reminds him... “I don't think I'm even supposed to tell you we're in the future. Dunno how you're supposed to crack that to anyone, anyway.”

 

“How far in the future?” That Steve can say that, without his breathing going all funny, is amazing.

 

“Bout seventy years. Ain't even nineteen hundred anymore.”

 

Steve's quiet a moment, then, “Flying cars?”

 

That surprises a laugh out. Kind of a dry laugh, a harsh laugh, but a laugh. “Not a lot, no. Not much room for flying cars with so many buildings around. Tony could make one, sure.” Steve nods, but he still looks confused. Oh, right. “Tony Stark. Howard's kid. Could make a flying car,” he clarifies. “Probably out of the stuff in his kitchen.”

 

“Howard has a kid?”

 

Bucky laughs again. “That kid is older 'n us. Smart-mouthed as Howard, alright. He'd sleep with your sister, and when you came ‘round to break his arm he'd sleep with you too.” 

 

He expects Steve to laugh, too, but Steve is frowning. If Steve knew Tony — but he doesn't, so Bucky probably sounds like an ass. 

 

“Really, Tony's a swell guy, just — like Howard. He's the one who built my arm.” Bucky makes a vague gesture at his left side. “I mean, he was an utter ass about it. I — I had an arm, before,” he falters. Before SHIELD took him in, but that's more than he wants to explain. “But Tony wanted to make me a better one. Kept bothering me about it 'til I just about socked him in the teeth. I didn't want anyone touching...” He can't help but glance at Steve's hand, still covering his real one, and then Steve's eyes dart over too, and he grabs without thinking, twisting his fingers against Steve's, and then.

 

It takes him a moment to process. Because Steve would have thought — would have taken his hand away, and he doesn't want that. Steve isn't pulling away, just looking at him. 

 

“Did you ever try to break his arm?”

 

“What?” 

 

“Howard's kid.”

 

“No,” Bucky responds automatically. “Wait. Maybe?” He can't remember, but they've fought before they were — not friends, but not enemies either. “I might have tried.” Difficult to break a metal arm, though. He would know. “Pretty sure I didn't. Might have cracked his ribs once.” It's blurry, it's always blurry, and honestly he's not inclined to try and see through it. “I can't always remember,” is the best he can admit. It's easier to look down, away, at some corner of white sheets. There's plenty he doesn't want to remember, but it's all mixed together in his head, the good things and the bad things and the honest things and the lies. Not like he could pick and choose what he wanted.

 

“Bucky.”

 

“Steve.” He shouldn't need to keep reassuring himself, because this is already so much stranger than any dream he's had. Couldn't be making this up. He forces his head back up, because Steve is here, and he should be looking. Shouldn't be wasting a moment of having Steve back, not after waiting for so long, and yet he's finding it hard to make eye contact. There's so much he should be saying. So many things that have changed. So many things he's not sure about. 

 

“If you can't remember,” Steve says, and Bucky will look him in the eye. Nothing to be scared of. Being scared was stupid. “Can I show you?”

 

Steve is looking at him with this look on his face, tender and full of worry and absolutely infuriating. “Yeah, sure,” Bucky says, probably more vehemently than strictly necessary. Fuck, he's been torn apart and put back together, so what can Steve possibly tell him that warrants that dopey face?

 

Steve brings up his free hand — slowly, like he knows Bucky's eyes are drawn to any movement near him — towards Bucky's left shoulder. He hesitates a moment over the empty sleeve, then gently puts his hand on what's left of his shoulder. 

 

He can feel it, kind of. He's still got a good bit of his shoulder left, but there's nerve damage and scars and some of it is there but he can't feel it. Kind of stupid, really, that he can feel bits that aren't there and he can't feel the bits that are.

 

Steve's moving his hand again, and Bucky tries not to stiffen up. His neck. He can't see Steve's fingers there, but he can feel them. Steve touches his hair — too long, he thinks again, really should have cut it but it didn't seem important before — and pauses again. 

 

It's not as if Bucky hasn't been touched. Nat knows how to touch him, and she's nice enough not to use her ninja skills to poke him whenever she wants. Tony tries, but usually Bucky beats him off and lets Pepper come over instead. The look on Tony's face is always worth it. Fury shook his hand once. Barton usually keeps his distance, 'cuz he understands what it's like not to hear people creep up on you. He knows guys who can't be touched, ever, at all. He knows people damaged like that, and he's not so bad, really.

 

Maybe he should tell Steve that. Hey, Stevie, I know what you're doing and I appreciate it and all, but I'm not made of glass. I'm not a bomb you need to disarm, a trigger you need to avoid. 

 

But Steve's hand is warm against his neck, and it's close in a way he hasn't felt in a long time. Like everything could make sense, somehow, because it's him and Steve and that's the only thing that's ever made sense to him. Him, he's nothing. Never was. But him-and-Steve, they were something. It didn't matter how beat up and lost he was if he could just be there with Steve. 

 

That could make him weak. Depending on someone else again, wanting them, needing them to feel whole. Maybe he was better off alone, surviving. Because if Steve got hurt again —

 

Breathe, have to breathe, have to focus. Steve's hand, his fingers and knuckles and palm, held tightly against his own. Steve's hand, warm against the back of his neck. Steve, here. He was sure he'd never get to see or touch Steve again and he's still complaining and freezing up and shaking. Yup. Shaking, he notes, but it feels oddly distant. Like when he knows he's hurt, but he has to keep going. He can feel a slight tremble in his leg, in his hand, but he can ignore them. Could be anything. Adrenaline. Blood sugar. Stupid animal fear. 

 

Or maybe he is a bomb, and he just doesn't know it. 

 

Steve moves again, his whole body, this time, scooting over the cheap blankets until his legs are brushing against Bucky's, and his face — his face is very close, suddenly, close enough that Bucky barely has to look up to meet his eyes, and Steve —

 

— does not know how to kiss at all. 

 

Yup, those are Steve's lips, dry, right up against his, and that's what he was doing, messing with Bucky's hair. Trying to get some sort of hold. Maybe. He's not holding very hard, not trying to pull Bucky closer or anything, just — trying to kiss him. 

 

Not trying very hard. Or, worse, he is trying hard and he’s just that bad at it. 

 

Lucky for Steve, kissing is something he's had much more practice with.

 

He gets his hand free from Steve's and puts it firmly behind Steve's head, digging into the short hairs, and pushes himself up a bit. Steve had the right idea, but they aren't nearly close enough. He pushes their mouths together, harder, parts his lips, because if they are going to kiss, he's going to make it a damn fine kiss. 

 

Thank god Steve is quick on the uptake, because Bucky can't do this all on his own, no matter how good he is. Steve quickly puts his arm around Bucky's back, and opens his mouth and finally, finally, they are having a _kiss_ , the kind that makes him stretch up off the chair until his back aches and he has to lean against Steve to keep his balance. Steve's got the mass to do that now, anyway. 

 

When he pulls away to breathe, Steve is looking at him with big, wide eyes, and none of this seems familiar. Not even a little. “Should I remember this?” he asks. 

 

A moment passes, then Steve shakes his head. “This is new.” 

 

Of course. If he'd kissed Steve before, he would have made sure Steve learned it proper. “Why?” He's not sure he wants an answer, but he can't help but ask. This is new, Steve said, but he could believe it either way, that they'd done it forever or that they'd never touched each other at all. 

 

Steve's mouth opens before any sound comes out, and it's funny, kinda, how he looks with his lips all red and wet. Like any other guy on the street who's just gotten kissed 'til he ran out of breath, and yet still so much Steve, sitting up straight, all his attention on Bucky, like he's looking at mission specs or maps or something. “Because you're not dead,” he says after a moment, and his mouth shuts up again. He's frowning, and it's a terrible look on him. “You're not afraid.”

 

What. Not afraid? He's been shaking for what feels like ages. Wondering what he would remember, what he could remember, what Steve would see when he looked at him. Afraid? Of a kiss? So far that's been the least scary thing he's done. 

 

“You said no, before,” Steve says, looking down at his hands. That's a look Bucky remembers, god, yes, he remembers. Every time Steve would look away, hiding his bruised and bloody face when Bucky came home because nothing happened. When he'd start coughing and try to hold it in, shaking, pale, barely even able to protest when Bucky excused himself, sorry, ladies, and struggled to make his way through the crowd of people back to Steve's side to take him home. When Bucky caught sight of another rejection letter from the recruitment office, and had to bite back a lecture, again, Stevie, you're gonna get yourself arrested. Shame, a bit of anger, mostly guilt. Because he was making Bucky take care of him again. He always said that, no matter how many times Bucky'd told him otherwise. 

 

“Well, I'm saying yes now,” he says, because Steve needs to hear, loud and clear, that this is fine and he wants it, he really does. He can't remember if he wanted Steve, and he definitely doesn't remember ever telling him no, but Steve remembers it. Now, though — now, he's still shaking and his memory is Swiss cheese and he really, really enjoyed that kiss. “In fact,” he says, but he's smiling, and slurring the words together. “I might be interested in saying yes again.” Steve rolls his eyes — it's an obvious line, and not one classy dame in the world would fall for it — but Steve has always been easier to please, with honesty and being direct. 

 

Also, Steve's always picked things up quick. Now that he has permission, he's got a firm hold in Bucky's hair — knew there was a reason he hadn't cut it — and his mouth won't stay closed. Bucky, at least, knows enough to keep them from bumping noses or teeth, but it's been so long since he'd kissed long enough to start feeling lightheaded from the lack of air. No one else could keep up. 

 

It's not quite comfortable, with him leaning up out of his chair and Steve, already taller, trying to lean down from the bed, and Bucky is mighty tempted to push Steve back down, but he's not completely sure the bed will hold both of them. 

 

A shrill beep rings out, and Bucky pulls back, startled. Steve looks around warily, which would be intimidating if he wasn't still panting softly. 

 

“I hope that doesn't mean the docs are about to bust in,” Bucky says. It is a bit suspicious they hadn't come banging on the door the moment Steve's vitals changed, but, knowing SHIELD, there are surveillance cameras set up everywhere anyway. Someone is probably writing the opening sentences of his thesis next to the monitor. Or bargaining a fat bonus for tomorrow's headlines. 

 

Steve quickly swipes a hand across his mouth, and Bucky recognizes the gesture. Used to do it himself, hiding a red smear of lipstick against his palm when his Ma came home unexpectedly. It won't do that much for Steve, though. 

 

It takes a second beep before Bucky recognizes it, and he's highly tempted to ignore it, until a third beep rings out. “My communicator,” he says, glancing at the door. “It's not important.”

 

“You should answer it?” Who knows what’s making Steve hesitate. It’s probably just that he has no idea what a modern communicator is, or how it works, but Bucky prefers to think Steve’s just as reluctant to stop kissing as he is. 

 

“I'm on vacation,” Bucky says, just as it rings again. “Forced vacation,” he adds, because Steve knows how to read between the lines. “And it’s not an emergency signal.”

 

But Steve is already getting that look on his face, the one that says, we might have been kissing like the end of a sappy romantic flick, but duty is calling.

 

Damn that look. 

 

“Alright, I'll get it. Forget anything you see outside this door, classified, not allowed to leave your bed, soldier.” He waves vaguely with his good arm, and Steve rolls his eyes, but doesn't make a move to follow him. 

 

He doesn't want to open the door. It feels like the only thing keeping the rest of the world out. But, he has to admit, Steve is probably right. If Fury was serious about kicking him out, his comm would be dead. 

 

He makes a quick grab for his comm unit — won't Steve get a laugh out of this thing, as small as a business card, and more powerful than any radio they had down at the department store — and quickly steps back, shutting the door behind him. “Barnes here,” he says, making sure to sound extra sullen, in case it is Fury on the line. 

 

“Doombots. Times Square. Get your ass over here.” 

 

Nat sounds more pissed than usual. Her voice comes out tinny, but he can make it out. Underground bases. Always messed with the comm lines. Fury really should just give up and let Tony upgrade them. He’s hacking their systems on the regular anyway, so it’s not like it’s much more of a security breach. And considering how many of their bases are below ground and above ground and out in the middle of not-even-nowhere, he’s gotten really tired of resorting to Morse code just to get a complete message across. 

 

“Doombots are Richards' area, Nat. I'm on vacation.” 

 

Seeing Steve mouthing 'Doombots?' next to him really doesn't inspire him to heed the call of duty. Steve gets this _look_ , sometimes, like he's confused, because whatever he's hearing is just too stupid to possibly be coming out of someone's mouth. It's hard to hide a smirk at the thought of him staring Doom down with that look on his face. 

 

“Richards is out of contact.”

 

“Richards is always out of contact when it's his turn to clean up. What is it this time? Alternate dimension? Lost in space again?” He's allowed to be snarky. It's one thing if the world is in danger, but having the greatest moment of his shitty existence interrupted because Reed Richards can't be bothered to play killer metal dollies with Doom will not cut it. 

 

He can hear Natasha rolling her eyes at him. “Look, it's me and the kid out here — ”

 

“And the kid is perfectly capable of handling Doombots.”

 

“It's not your ass that ends up on the front page of the Bugle every time we fight with him.”

 

Bucky lets out a snort. She has a point. He's met the guy who ran the Bugle, unfortunately, and the man is a menace. Calling him obsessive is an understatement. The kid seems to think it’s funny, though, so him and the other agents are willing to let it be. Fury refuses to comment on why his newly-formed social media division calls themselves the J squad.

 

He’s already running the calculations in his head — they’re four levels down, but he’ll have to stop at the armory on level 3. At a sprint it shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes to hit the Square. “You know, Fury benched me. Personally,” he drawls.

 

A loud boom crackles over the comm. “More incoming,” he hears Nat shout, and then, “What, so you need him to sign your permission slip? Get off your ass, Barnes. We need anyone we can get.”

 

“Anyone?” He means to sound sarcastic, but it goes a little flat at the end, because. Because. 

 

Because it's so completely stupid to even think what he's thinking, when Steve's been frozen for years and they haven't even seen a doctor yet and Steve's hasn't even seen his mechanical arm, let alone a fully-functional, fully-armed mechanical killing machine. 

 

But. Steve looks a damn sight better than half the recruits at SHIELD's boot camp, and he's never trusted anyone else to hold his back completely. 

 

He squishes his hand around his comm, and flashes a grin at Steve. “You up for a hospital break?”

 

Steve's smile is fucking _blinding._

 

“Tell Fury I'm bringing a date,” he says, and taps the comm off. He grabs Steve's hand. “Come on, if we run we can get up to the armory before they can finish locking down the stairwells.”

 

Someone helpfully let a pair of shoes on the floor, and Steve's thin shirt and slacks won't win him any fashion shows, but at least it's not a backless gown. He motions for Steve to follow him out. 

 

“You take all your girls fighting on a first date?” Steve says, fingers flying across the shoelaces as Bucky grabs for his arm.

 

“Naw, just my best fella,” he says back, the old words coming out so easily he almost fumbles with his own arm. It clicks in and he gives it a quick flex, twitching each finger, rotating his wrist and elbow joints. When he looks up, Steve is looking at him — looking at all of him. Him, as he is now, beat up and mechanical and stitched back together.

 

His smile hasn't changed. 

 

“Come on. Doombots won't shoot themselves. Gonna make this the best first date you'll ever be on.”

 

“Like I've been on that many,” Steve says ruefully. 

 

“It's a new world out there, Stevie,” Bucky says. He thinks, again, of how it felt to step into Steve's hospital room — the world had changed. Didn't smell or taste or act the same. This weird and wide new world. He moves towards the stairwell, Steve at his heels, and feels the urge to grab Steve's hand again, awkward as it would be. He can take the steps two, three at a time, and Steve can keep pace easy. “Think you can keep up?”

 

“I think I can still outrun you.”

 

“You're on.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> On the one hand, I actually like a good portion of this fic, which is rare. On the other, it's been sitting around my hard drive for seven years. Was the wait even worth it, lol. Alas, the age really shows on this fic. I can remember thinking, "haha, wouldn't it be funny if I reference having Spiderman or the Fantastic Four in the MCU 'cuz that's not happening" and...yeah. I also wrote a good chunk of this before we met MCU Winter Soldier Bucky. It was never going to be in line with canon anyway, but I feel he ended up a little more angsty and co-dependent in this fic. Not sure it's my exact headcanon for him, but I still like how this fic turned out. 
> 
> Title is from "Woke From Dreaming" by The Delgados. I always found the first line striking:  
> "Woke from dreaming   
> but it took convincing  
> I was shaking   
> screaming I was still alive"  
> and, well, I am terrible with titles, so.
> 
> I've got a sneaking suspicion I stole the spandex APB from someone else. It sounds too clever to have come from my head. 
> 
> If the original prompter happens to come across this, hi. Sorry for the wait.


End file.
